Making Agenda 21 work at the municipal level: the Swedish experience.

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, initiated an international effort to make agendas for the environment and development for the twenty-first century - the Agenda 21. Such processes take time and there is no doubt that the 1972 Stockholm Conference has been an important starting point for the recognition of the need for this process.

Sweden chose a clear bottom-up approach on Agenda 21, meaning that the process should start and develop at the municipal level. No rules or regulations were set out from central authorities. The municipalities were free to design Agenda work as they felt right for them. Local authorities, businesses, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), schools and the general public were all invited to participate. Five years later, all 288 municipalities had prepared supportive documentation for Agenda decisions. By governmental initiative, the regional and national authorities attended the ongoing work in their respective area of responsibility and became, in this way, actively involved in Agenda work.

A National Agenda 21 Committee presented a report to the 1997 United Nations General Assembly special session on the environment. It summarizes the Swedish experience and describes areas where projects were generated, for instance, in information and education, recycling, waste-water processing, environmental criteria for public procurement and patterns of consumption. Areas of a more compound character, implying more difficulties in the sense that several sectors and levels of the society are involved, are energy, transport, physical planning and braiding, biodiversity, sustainable agriculture and business involvement.

Creation of sustainable development requires a combination of social, economic and ecological dimensions. This is why the Swedish Prime Minister in 1995 appointed a special Commission on Sustainable Development within the Government. Its first report set out a common platform for the different economic sectors. The results of the subsequent government programme are encouraging and cover broad policy areas such as business and consumer policy, energy and transport, forestry and agriculture, urban planning and building, the educational system, research and development, and architecture and design. Green indicators will also be elaborated in order to assess how ecological sustainability is progressing.

In order to stimulate sustainable development and continue the Agenda 21 process, Swedish municipalities can apply for support for local investment programmes from 1998 and during the years to come.

A total of $850 million has been allocated for the period 1998-2001. Local businesses, NGOs and the general public have been invited to participate in the elaboration of the local investment programmes. In 1998, 42 municipalities altogether received support totalling $285 million in the first round. The projects of the local investment programmes include the restoration of housing estates to more efficient energy and resource use, and an improved local environment. Another main field of investment is conversion to renewable energy and district heating systems.

Other fields include remediation of contaminated soils, restoration of wetlands to reduce the discharge of nutritive salts and increase biological diversity, and projects to reduce traffic-related emissions and to improve waste management. The average national support is around 30 per cent of the total investment. Apart from the environmental effects, the investment programmes in the 42 municipalities will create some 8,000 new jobs.

Although the support for local investments focuses on investments in sustainable physical infrastructure, the local Agenda 21 process contains other essential activities like the development of democratic processes, information and education, and the changing of patterns of production and consumption.

Swedish experiences suggest that one of the most important measures to integrate social, economic and ecological dimensions in the spirit of Agenda 21 is to let people and authorities at the municipal level come forward with their wishes and proposals, and take part in decision-making and implementation, bringing together responsible actors at the local and national levels. This is the reason behind the Swedish Government's combination of the basic Agenda 21 work, to a great extent laid down at the local level, and a joint national and local allocation of resources, with the aim to establish and support sustainable development in Sweden.